Barefoot on Broken Ice, for His Mistress's Smile

This man had tried every extreme sport imaginable, and with each passing year, his girlfriends seemed to get younger. Yet in all our eight years of marriage, he never once brought a woman home.

Then came the paragliding accident. When he finally woke up in that hospital bed, the first face he saw was Millicent Turner's—some random woman who'd wandered into the wrong room by mistake. From that moment, he became convinced she was his one true love.

Overnight, Millicent became his obsession. Luxury cars, sprawling estates, roses imported by the plane-load—nothing was too extravagant. He even dropped hundreds of millions on diamonds just to see her smile.

When Millicent wanted entertainment, he made me dance on a frozen lake in subzero temperatures. I twirled in that flimsy dress until the ice cracked beneath me and my body finally gave out.

Then there was the racing game she "accidentally" switched to turbo mode before slamming into me. The snap of my leg bone echoed through the room as blood soaked through my clothes. Ambrose barely glanced up before dismissing it with, "She's just a kid—she doesn't know any better."

Clutching my stomach, I dragged my broken body away, whispering, "The debt I owed your family... consider it paid in full."

Late one night at the club, the thin walls betrayed Ambrose's private conversation: "Aren't you worried Jasmine might actually leave you?"

His laugh cut through me like a knife. "That desperate housewife? Throw her a few sweet words and she'll come crawling back." The clink of glasses punctuated his cruelty. "A family-arranged marriage with a woman as exciting as a dead fish—how could she ever compete with Millicent?"

I downed my wine in one burning gulp, noticing a single white hair in my palm.

Returning home at 2 AM, the villa reeked of sex. Women's lingerie and a man's tie littered the floor, a black stocking dangling from the railing like a flag of conquest.

"Clean this up," Ambrose commanded, descending the stairs with Millicent wrapped in his shirt, her neck blooming with hickeys. When I hesitated, he smirked. "Fine—I'll deduct a year's salary from the staff."

He knew I couldn't bear their resentment. So I knelt on the cold marble, gathering the evidence of their debauchery while Millicent giggled as Ambrose fed her grapes, his fingers lingering at her lips.